Stainless Veteran iirc you were heavy into the WoD stuff, were you ever a Storyteller and can you share some insights?
Hm. My most sage advice is this: never play or run Changeling: The Dreaming, it's for faggots.
Other than this, well, let's see.
Werewolf seems completely, unredeemably gay
Not really, it depends on you and the players mostly. Ban any furry adjacent persons and you can run a sweet campaign about corporate hacker werewolves, who basically enter Astral/Matrix to steal valuable data from corporations and whatnot. Sort of like Shadowrun, but in a more contemporary setting. Or you can run a campaign about hobo-werewolves, who are desperately searching who and why is corrupting their patron spirits - the Spirit of that Dark Alley, Spirit of Neverending Trash Heap, and various other city spirits, who help them. Or, if you want combatfaggotry, you can completely steamroll everything except mages. So I woldn't discard WtA completely.
and Vampire seems like the pointless kind of autistic
Not really, Vampire is the most versatile lineup, and most of the metaplot are there, in VtM books.
but Mage looks really cool. People say it's a bitch to run. Supposedly Mage:the Awakening was a fix for this, but is it, though?
Yeah, MtA is pretty great, although imbalanced as fuck. I mostly played Technocracy though. Can't really give advice on it, because I kinda found most of the traditions rather overlapping and somewhat arbitrary. Especially those Emos.
Also I'm not sure if the fluff is as cool. In any P&P setting, it's always the most fun to play humans having a hard time in a hard world, and most of the WoD stuff doesn't seem to cater to that.
Hunter: The Reckoning to the rescue. If you sometimes wanted to play as Father Alexander Anderson from Hellsing, it's your chance. Or if you liked Carpenter's Vampire movie. It's a later lineup, so it's somewhat unfinished and imbalanced, but really fun.
-What is the best oWoD/nWoD lore, and what is the best way to inject it into my veins? Reading rulebooks just for the fluff or reading shitty - but not too shitty - novels set in a cool setting is a-ok with me. But I'm not about to read it all, that would be insane.
Hmm. In my opinion the lore in Revised edition is gradually spread through clanbooks (tribebooks, traditiounbooks, whatever) and supplements. There is no definite lorebook, even Gehenna has multiple incompatible scenarios. VtM novels are a mixed bag, some are written by people who never read any WoD book and know shit all about setting.
-oWoD/nWoD which is better and why? Are the mechanics of the new stuff better? Is the lore better? How hard is it to port over the old stuff to the new stuff, and how would one go about doing it specifically? Or perhaps just port it over into a completely different system?
Don't really know nWoD mechanics too well, but compared to oWoD new lore was shit and gay.
-Any of you Storytellers have any experience running Hunter:the Vigil or Mage:the Something? Some tips? Do you use the other settings for monster generation or do you have a better, faster way of doing it that's nonetheless flavourful?
I mostly used ideas from folktales, books and sometimes movies/anime. Never generated by template, so I can't say I know any useful speedhacks. Run Hunter: The Reckoning, it was really fun with angst, laughs, overcoming of impossible odds and whatnot. Never played/GMd HtV.
-How do you go about combining multiple franchises, such as Mage:the X, Hunter:the Vigil, and Changeling:the Lost
In oWoD? Very simple. You need to know at least some basic lore about major players a city - vampires, of course, but also mages, Technocracy, Pentex, some werewolves. If you're running small city/town campaign, than mostly vampires and an occasional mage. Then you need to envision their interests, what they want, why they want this, and what are they prepared to do to reach their goals. You can also add various exotic bloodlines, creatures, wraiths, spectres, cultists, and various other antagonists or allies. You should also prepare in advance if you're going to run combat-heavy campaign, look up various munchkin mechanics holes, and patch them if you can. Design organic combat encounters, (not like in Dragon Age 2, where enemies fell on you from the sky or slided down in suddenly appearing rope).
I didn't got into nWoD at all, so I can't comment.
-Geez there are like 10 different versions. Which nWoD? Alternatively, which oWoD? What are the good sourcebooks? Armory seems like a no brainer.
I'd recommend VtM corebooks, Guide to Camarilla, Guide to Sabbath, all clanbooks (some are shit lorewise, for example Gangrel clanbook, but they all have various metaplot pieces and some interesting Disciplines). Baali clanbook is shit though. From WtA I can recommend Corebooks, Umbra, Tribebooks Bonegnawers and Glass Walkers. Maybe Freak Legion, although it's a very trashy book. Mage corebook is decend, I really liked Guide to Technocracy though. Tradition books are a really mixed bag. Boy, do I hate Hollow Ones.
I really recommend Wraith: the Oblivion, corebooks are quite interesting and the concept is pretty fun. Shame they killed it early.
Hunter books are serviceable.
Demon: the Fallen is shit, don't bother.
Don't touch Changeling: the Dreaming, or you'll become infected by its faggotry and will become an otherkin and will start a Tumblr.
-Seriously how the fuck do you run Mage and make it cool
You can do anything you want with mages, marauders and barabbi. You can try emulate urban fantasy stories, such as Constantine comics, you can try and run trippy astral campaign, you can pit mages against various other races, you can create a story of personal enlightment. What kind of campaign you want to run, anyway?
